Wesley A. Clark

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Alternative Title:
Wesley Allison Clark

Wesley A. Clark, (Wesley Allison Clark), American physicist and computer scientist (born April 10, 1927, New Haven, Conn.—died Feb. 22, 2016, Brooklyn, N.Y.), envisioned and designed (1961) the LINC (Laboratory Instrument Computer), a self-contained interactive computer that was the first minicomputer. The 12-bit computer was easy to operate, contained a display and a keyboard, and stored its programs on a magnetic tape. It was created for use by biomedical researchers. At a time when conventional thinking involved multiple users sharing time on a single mainframe computer, Clark’s creation allowed the researcher full use of a sole dedicated computer. He earned (1947) a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and in 1952 he joined the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT. He received (1955) a degree in electrical engineering from MIT. At the Lincoln Laboratory, Clark led the design of the TX-0, an early transistorized computer, and the TX-2, which introduced a graphical computer interface. Clark and his associates built a prototype of his design for the LINC in 1962 using modules made by Digital Equipment Corp. The new apparatus was first used by the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., to analyze the neural responses of a cat. Digital Equipment eventually built about 50 LINCs and sold 21. In addition, in 1967 Clark persuaded Lawrence Roberts, head of the ARPANET project, that networking could be best accomplished through the use of small computers called Interface Message Processors. Clark worked (1964–72) at Washington University in St. Louis (Mo.). He received (1981) the Eckert-Mauchly Award from the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society, and in 1999 he was made a member of the National Academy of Engineering.